Comments

I see you are just down the road from me in Milton Keynes. Looking at your profile and stats, I estimate that you are quite new to chess and can highly recommend Milton Keynes chess club (you should be able to google search them). Get in touch with them and tell them you are a beginner and you should be able to get some coaching if you join the club. If you are after private one to one coaching with a half decent club player, please message me privately and I can send you further details.

abijith95, this isn't really the best place for you to come for such advice. Please look at the resources available on the site. It's important that students are not spoonfed information and that they take an independent approach to learning.

That said, I would not bother playing 1 minute games if I were you. You should concentrate on improving and for that you will need time and time to make your moves.

Some games you play will be, for example, 2 minutes +1 (or 2+1). This means you get two minutes for all your moves plus a time bonus of 1 second per move made. This ensures that you should never run out of time, as long as you take less than one second per move. As stated above though, I would stick to playing longer versions of the game to start with (5 minutes each is okay for a beginner for blitz games). I would start with half hour per person games or play the turn based stuff.

I reiterate, that you should look at the website resources and look at the real beginners stuff in order to improve. You'll need to do this yourself and if you have half a brain, you should find that within 6 months you will get up to a reasonable standard. It really depends on how much hard work you are prepared to do!

Since the last time I have been improving under your guildlines. Today I want to know what are the steps needed to take while playing a 1min. match. I have also noticed during the play that when certain moves are made our time increases.Why is it so. Is it important to do castling in such games.

Thankyou sir for your thoughtful information. I have been improving since the last time. Today I want to ask you of how do we become grandmaster,like NM, IM etc . Are we selected by our rating or is there some specific criteria. Also sir I would like to know of how can we improve our ratings.

If I were you, I would look at some of the basic videos on this site (you may find you'll need a premium membership to view all of the videos, but you might find some free ones). Use the search facility to look for "checkmates" or "basic checkmates".

Thanks for further thoughts on pawn development. It is true that positioning pawns carefully and holding back with them can stop knights advancing and knights can destroy a defence if not watched. However, a deep line out into enemy territory is also a good strategy as it gives more powerful pieces a safe resting place and it can also block an opponent's bishop out of a game. I agree that pawn placement can be key to success although I am sure there are many other things I could try if I knew what they were!

To improve you will need to look at pawn structures and a wise man said to me once (actually, it was at least twice). "Develop plans not pieces". This is true enough although the end product of a plan is usually piece development.

Just remember that a pawn cannot move backwards so each pawn move is committal. The French master Andre Philidor postulated that "pawns are the soul of chess". Now that's deep!

One of the countless beauties of chess is it's richness. Chess is a game you can enjoy it at whatever level you play so whether you develop pieces not plans or whether you throw your pawns up the board or play more strategically the important thing is that you enjoy the experience!

I probably need to make more of the tutorials. I think I keep to your rules with the possible exception of liking to take a lot of pawn moves at the start and hold back most other pieces until I have a lineout structure. I have found this effective but I may be missing more effective alternatives. The book sounds worth a read. I tried to read a book by Karpov but found the moves coding hard to read perhaps because I lack a chess board to move things around. These are things I could address with more time. Thanks for your advice. Good to know there are a few coaches in the UK when you see the number worldwide!

Thanks for your message. I suggest Winning Chess Openings by Yasser Seirawan or another similar basic openings book. You might want to invest on the site as a premium (subscribing) member and you will have access to lots of videos, tutorials etc, on the openings.

I can't suggest any openings to you at this stage and we don't live in "the matrix" so I can't give you information, you'll have to learn some yourself! Even just doing this will help improve your chess!

If you don't know opening theory, this is not so important anyway as long as you adhere to some basic principles, namely:

1) Control the centre squares with pieces/pawns (pieces from good squares at a distance).

2) Develop your pieces to good, safe squares. Knights to central squares (not on the side of the board)

3) Get castled!

4) Avoid developing rooks via the rooks file - stick them on open files along your own back rank.

5) Try not to get your queen out too early - she can end up getting chased over the board.

6) Try to play no more than 3 pawn moves in the first 10 moves.

7) Avoid basic mistakes which lose material.

8) Try not to move a piece twice in the opening unless you either have to or it is to your advantage to do so.

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